Opinion: Is President Trump using executive orders effectively?
On a special bonus episode (first released on April 14, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: We asked: What do you think of President Donald Trump's use of executive orders - and the use of them by presidents in general? Forum is new series from Paste BN's Opinion team, dedicated to showcasing views from across the political spectrum on issues that Americans are starkly divided on.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Michael McCarter:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Michael McCarter, vice president and group editor of the opinion sections of Gannett, the parent company of USA Today. This is a bonus episode of the Excerpt highlighting the series from USA Today's opinion team that's known as Forum. It features views from across the political spectrum on issues that Americans are starkly divided on. Today we're hearing from a few folks about their feelings on how President Trump has used executive orders. Since entering office, Trump has signed more than 100 executive orders and shows no signs of letting up. Is there a right amount? Let's listen to what a few people in different places from across the country had to say.
Kelly Kanetkar:
As soon as another president comes in, they're going to write new executive orders, and so they're going to upend anything that has already been done, which President Trump has been doing. He's upended a lot of things, and now when a new president comes in, he or she will do the same thing and it's just going to continue to happen over and over.
Michael McCarter:
Kelly Kanetkar is 58 and lives in Beaumont, Texas. She wants to see Congress do more legislating.
Kelly Kanetkar:
There is a process in place for creating laws and those kinds of things, and executive orders I think should be used sparingly.
Do I think that President Trump is using his executive orders for the right things? Definitely not. I'm particularly incensed about the executive orders getting rid of DEI because I just think that that is something that a lot of people don't even understand. They don't even really know what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean, and they're using it as quotas, which has nothing to do with that, so that's been a real frustration for me. Other executive orders related to the environment or related to tariffs, those things are I think really wrecking havoc on our country right now.
I definitely think Congress should be doing more. That's their job. They're supposed to be creating the laws and making the laws, and the politicians have just completely taken a back seat, and I think that is bad precedence going forward because we have this system of checks and balances, and if we get rid of that, then we are, I think going more towards, and I hate to say it, but a dictatorship.
I would like to see President Trump focus more on creating jobs for people in the U.S., yes, but not in the way that he's doing it. I would also like to see him focus on immigration, but by encouraging Congress to pass laws that make it easier for people to come to the U.S. legally and have more of a compassionate attitude towards it and do the jobs they're already doing for us.
Michael McCarter:
Justin Kuchar lives in Coweta, Oklahoma. He supports some of Trump's actions, but he's concerned about the legal authority of the executive orders and whether they will hold up in court. He's 48.
Justin Kuchar:
I think Trump has the right issues he's looking at with executive orders. I think we're in a time where we might not be in kinetic war, but we're in economic war, we're in technological war, and China's influence is growing throughout the world, and that's at our southern border now. Mexico is purchasing Chinese and Russian weapons. Those are just some alliances that I think need addressed, and so I think he's doing a good job at that.
The problem with it is Congress has a role in declaring war and those types of things, and I'm not sure what authorities the president is operating under for some of those executive actions. I think Congress needs to be doing much more through legislation. The legislative needs to lay out clear and concise authorities for the President and not just the President for the judicial as well, and they need to be a lot more active, and that can be really challenging when you have narrow splits in the House and the Senate.
I think with the challenges of the world right now, we are at war and I think that Trump is trying to do some of the things that you would do in wartime maybe without some of the authorities the Congress is responsible to lay out. I think that Trump needs to be more clear instead of trying to sunshine and rainbows everything, I think he needs to be clear with the American people exactly where we stand with China and Russia and Iran and Mexico and Canada.
Michael McCarter:
Then there's Craig Markowitz, a 52-year-old from Port Jefferson Station, New York. Craig thinks President Trump is using executive orders excessively to bypass Congress.
Craig Markowitz:
I believe that President Trump is relying too much on executive orders to enact his agenda. While I think some of them are good, I do feel that a lot of them are being done without Congress's approval, especially when it comes to cutting aid or funding from things that were appropriated by Congress, and it is Congress who has the power of the purse and they're the ones who should be deciding whether or not those funds are paid out or whether or not they're cut back.
Presidents are starting to use them more to enact their agenda and bypassing Congress and the legislature to get their agendas pushed through, and I think you're seeing that a lot now, especially with the fact that a lot of the executive orders that President Trump has put through are being challenged in the courts. They were challenged in the courts under Biden as well things like the refunds for the student loans, so if you're doing things to take away money or give money, that's not the President's job, and to do it with executive orders is the wrong way to go about it.
I don't believe that President Trump is focusing on the right issues when it comes to executive orders. Yes, he campaigned on removing wokeness as they're using that term from the government and from the country, but he also campaigned on lowering grocery prices and he campaigned on keeping the border safe, but I think that most Americans are now feeling the pinch of grocery prices, especially now recently with the tariffs that he's enacted. He's just not seeing what the people are seeing, and he's focusing more on other issues than what most Americans are feeling.
Michael McCarter:
Drew Taylor, who is 61 and lives in San Antonio, Texas, thinks that executive orders should align more closely with legislative actions.
Drew Taylor:
I think we've got immigration kind of under control, but I'm worried about these deportations and that seemed kind of haphazard as far as the lack of the review, I guess, of these cases. It just seems like they were rounding up people as quickly as they can. I think a lot of people in Texas, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, we appreciate the fact that Congress probably should be getting some more resources down here if we're going to enforce these border and immigration laws, but a lot of these things seem to be kind of a smokescreen to other things.
I want to see Congress write laws that don't give the executive branch so much leeway and how to enforce them. If we're going to write a law about how the border is managed, then that's how the border should be managed, and it shouldn't be saying, "Here's our immigration law, Mr. President, go enforce it." I think the laws need to be a little bit more specific or more specific for the executive branch to follow.
It's just such a pendulum we have. It seems like one president doesn't want to enforce these laws and another president does, and that to me that shouldn't be allowed. They have to be enforced. That's why we write the laws. I'm not saying President Biden necessarily did a bad job, but it seems like we kind of went the other way than Trump wanted to, I don't know. It's been really confusing on and how one president can come in and just enforce the laws one way and another president can do it a totally different way.
Michael McCarter:
That's all we have for today's episode. This is a co-production with the Forum team at USA Today, where we invite our readers to weigh in writing on a national topic of interest. If your submission is selected for print, we might invite you to add your voice to a future special bonus episode like this one. There's a link to Forum in the show description. Let us know what you think about this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Michael McCarter, vice president of the Gannett Opinion Group. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.